Phaedra(s) at BAM Harvey Theater

Confess or repress: those are the options available when you lust after your stepson. The volcanic Isabelle Huppert, as the mythic queen Phaedra, tries both on for size in this carnal triptych combining multiple versions of the salacious Greek legend. Drawing from playwright Sarah Kane’s graphic study Phaedra’s Love and texts by J.M. Coetzee and Wajdi Mouawad for the script, Phaedra(s) imagines its heroine as a brutalized victim—alternately bloodied, blond-wigged, and professorial—cast into a stark world of exotic dancers and glass- walled rooms. Krzysztof Warlikowski directs this postmodern plunge into forbidden love, where sexuality wears sunglasses en route to illicit ends.